"Gun-free zones are the safest places on earth. You don't have to worry about anybody trying to kill you as you're shooting people."

Today I have come across some things that help keep this in perspective. One is from blogger Lenore Skenazy who reminds us of the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history, and how different these horrific events are today ... and why:

In the end there were 38 children dead at the school, two teachers and four other adults.

I’m not talking about the horrific shooting in Connecticut today. I’m talking about the worst school murder in American history. It took place in Michigan, in 1927. A school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, quietly planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary. Then, the day he was finally ready, he set off an inferno. When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, too, killing more people, including himself. And then, something we’d find very strange happened.

Nothing.

No cameras were placed at the front of schools. No school guards started making visitors show identification. No Zero Tolerance laws were passed, nor were background checks required of PTA volunteers—all precautions that many American schools instituted in the wake of the Columbine shootings, in 1999. Americans in 1928—and for the next several generations —continued to send their kids to school without any of these measures. They didn’t even drive them there. How did they maintain the kind of confidence my own knees and heart don’t feel as I write this?

They had a distance that has disappeared. A distance that helped them keep the rarity and unpredictability of the tragedy in perspective, granting them parental peace.

[...]

Time and space create distance. But today, those have compressed to zero. The Connecticut shooting comes into our homes–even our hands–instantly, no matter where we live. We see the shattered parents in real time. The President can barely maintain composure. This sorrow isn’t far away, it’s local for every single one of us.

And of course it brings up Columbine. Two horrors, separated by years and miles, are now fused into one. It feels like terrible things are happening to our children all the time, everywhere. Nowhere is safe.

As a result, I expect we will now demand precautions on top of precautions. More guards. More security cameras. More supervision. We will fear more for our kids and let go of them even more reluctantly. Every time we wonder if they can be safe beyond our arms, these shootings will swim into focus.

Will this new layer of fear and security make our children any safer? Probably not, but for a reassuring reason: A tragedy like this is so rare, our kids are already safe. Not perfectly safe. No one ever is. But safe.

That’s a truth the folks in 1928 America understood. We just don’t feel that way now.

I think Ms. Skenazy could/should have also gone another inch or two in her thoughts in that because of this technological age of 24/7 instant wall-to-wall news, that most times turns these events/stories into borderline entertainment, there are those who lust for such attention and find these times their opportunity for notoriety and fame in the media by copy-catting and carrying out such atrocities within a matter of days or weeks. And what does it say about our panting MSM that state troopers must now protect grieving families from the media?

Secondly, Debra Burlingame is a friend of mine on Facebook. She is the sister of Charles "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11. She offers these thoughts in addition to a story from Great Britain where "gun control" is so strict personal civilian ownership is forbidden, yet, the violence has increased by 89% in just ten years. Debra says:

"The event in Newton makes me want to get a gun, not outlaw them. Criminals and crazies will always find a way to arm themselves. See rising gun violence in England, which enacted a total ban after the Dunblane shooting."

As Burlingame noted, Great Britain in its knee-jerk emotional reaction to a mass killing disarmed its citizens, and the act has empowered the evil-minded and criminal minds, putting not only the citizens but the authorities at their mercy...

Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold.

The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year - a rise of 89 per cent. In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold. In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled. The statistic will fuel fears that the police are struggling to contain gang-related violence, in which the carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place.

Last week, police in London revealed they had begun carrying out armed patrols on some streets. The move means officers armed with sub-machine guns are engaged in routine policing for the first time.

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, said last night: 'In areas dominated by gang culture, we're now seeing guns used to settle scores between rivals as well as turf wars between rival drug dealers. 'We need to redouble our efforts to deal with the challenge.'

He added: 'These figures are all the more alarming given that it is only a week since the Metropolitan Police said it was increasing regular armed patrols in some areas of the capital'.

The gun crime figures, which were obtained by the Tories from official Parliamentary answers, do not include air weapons. But they provide the first regional breakdown of the increasing use of firearms.

Lancashire suffered the single largest rise in gun crime, with recorded offences increasing from 50 in 1998/99 to 349 in 2007/08, an increase of 598 per cent.

But! But! But if we take EVERYONE'S guns we will not have any shootings, and crime/violence will drop and we will all be in Utopia!!!

That is the mentality of the liberals/left in this country, as I said within and outside our government. They refuse to cite people as evil or even personally/criminally responsible, instead choosing to firmly lay all blame on inanimate objects (unless, of course, there is a political agenda angle they can cash in on ... See: George Zimmerman). The fact is, one of the biggest illegal movement of guns that threw gasoline on a blazing fire of death and violence in the last five years was our own government's, ATF/DOJ, "Fast and Furious" gunwalking to Mexican drug cartels. But the same MSM that is now gripping the anchor desks and grimacing through the TV screens calling for immediate gun control (banning) never seem to want to cite that tragedy. No, they are calling on these same gunwalking operatives to disarm all those American citizens who legally and responsibly own and operate our weapons, and who did not get up yesterday morning and trek to a grade school to mercilessly end dozens of lives. It is not our "gun culture" (as a recent NFL shooting story prompted some sports reporters to tag it) that needs addressing and changing. It is our sick mental health culture clashing with our liberal-imposed PC culture...

This morning I saw another psychologist on FOX echoing that psycholigist, and also telling the truth about these shootings ... so much so he made the female co-anchor squirm in her seat. It goes to the casual manner in which people with recognizable mental/psycological problems are treated, or not-treated, and taken seriously (not) in this country and mostly by the medical community. And then when something like this happens this primary/core 'cause/reason' for the shooter's actions is completely ignored and/or discounted. My medical school daughter is doing her psych rotation residency right now and, between me and you and the phone pole, has related that some 'patients' she has seen as being 'treated' while freely coming and going, but could easily 'snap' at any-given time if they don't take their meds or if something sets them off. The things they say would chill your blood. Yet, we live in a country that because one student in school is allergic to peanut butter the entire school is forbidden from having peanut butter in the school. But people who are obviously not healthy to the point of being a massive danger to society are handled with such PC deference to their rights are costing innocent lives. We are now upside down and inside out, and far too many innocent people are paying the harsh price for our PC new age interference.

Yeah, too bad we can't ask over six million Jews in Europe. Maybe we can ask those extremely happy, healthy, and wealthy folks in Cuba, China, and North Korea how 'gun control' is working out for them.

By the way, also keep in mind these celebrity-types are a bit on the mentally ill side, in addition to self-medicating.

11 comments to A Little ‘Honesty and Common Sense’ Perspective on The Horror

Let's have an honest discussion. I am not anti-gun, and I am not proposing any new laws. But some of the points raised in the blog post should be addressed / clarified.

"Will this new layer of fear and security make our children any safer? Probably not, but for a reassuring reason: A tragedy like this is so rare, our kids are already safe. Not perfectly safe. No one ever is. But safe. That’s a truth the folks in 1928 America understood. We just don’t feel that way now."

Be that as it may, people are deluding themselves if they think that it has always been this way with mass school shootings / killings.

There were relatively few of these events pre-1970. Sure, they happened, but they were quite uncommon.

Then there were about 37 school shootings in the U.S. between 1974 and 2000 (37 over about 26 years, or 1.4 per year).

There were about 30 school shootings in the period 2000-2011 (say 3 per year).

Most recently, there have been at least 5 (so far) in the U.S. in just 2012 alone.

So are these events still rare? Sure. But they are exponentially more common today than they were several decades ago, and their frequency is only accelerating.

Note the above is ONLY school shootings and ignores things like mall / workplace shootings. Add those in, and the picture looks even worse.

As for "The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year - a rise of 89 per cent", those are NOT the latest figures and that article is from several years ago. Even then, though, the figures in the U.K. looked fantastic compared to those for America. More recently, though:

Degan, you can shove all of your statistics and your cute little news stories right up your ass. We are not Britain. We kicked their sorry imperial asses out of here 237 years ago. It is not a valid comparison.

Guns are not responsible for this massacre: a very sick individual is. Your logic, the logic of the idiot liberal, always ignores the human factor; One way or the other this guy would have found a way to channel his rage and kill. Why was there not an armed individual -- police, security, etc. -- to stop this fucking lunatic? For the same reason the maniac in Colorado chose the one theater in a seven-mile radius that was a "gun-free zone."

"Guns are not responsible for this massacre: a very sick individual is. Your logic, the logic of the idiot liberal, always ignores the human factor; One way or the other this guy would have found a way to channel his rage and kill."

This the essence of the anti-gun debate ignored by the anti-gun crowd.

George, where did I say word one against guns? Read my post again, I never did. I thought in an "honest discussion" (especially in a topic about "a little honesty and common sense") people would want to know the actual facts about the increasing frequency of mass killings, and not the erroneous / outdated ones I was correcting. I should have known better.

BTW an opinion piece in National Review today also acknowledges that the frequency of these school shootings is increasing. See my other post in another thread here for that excerpt and link.

And as for Britain not being a valid comparison I agree but I WAS NOT THE ONE WHO RAISED IT AS A COMPARISON in the first place! I was only responding to / correcting outdated info given in the original post.

Let's first all concede the fact that it takes an incredibly disturbed/evil/sick individual to walk into a movie theater, a mall or a school and open fire on a complete group of strangers.

Items 1 and 2 are arguably related to one another, and tend to support the idea that law-abiding, armed citizens are inherently peaceful, and non-violent, and that gun ownership tends to translate into a powerful crime deterrent.

What do we then do with item #3?

It obviously doesn't fit in with line items 1 and 2.

Item #3 indicates that there may be more deranged people willing to act out some macabre fantasies in the US now than in years past.

What discussion we need to have, is what circumstances are more present today than in earlier times when these types of things just didn't happen as often.

If we want to examine the general mindset of the population as it relates to the instances of mass killings like the ones we've seen these past couple of decades, we have to admit that (as a Nation) we are becoming more liberal, not more conservative, and as we become more liberal, there are more mass killings.

The more liberal, secular, and permissive a society we become, the more that we deconstruct or re-engineer the basic family unit, and the more that we deconstruct or re-engineer the basic family unit, the more that these sorts of things tend to happen.

Which is why I point out Ms. Skenazy fell a bit short in her blog post in not pointing out the cult of celebrity that now runs through this country due to the 24/7 media. The sick/twisted minds now have an immediate attention machine, where as back in the time she points to it took days for such news stories to hit the farther corners of the nation, let alone if the 'masses' of people actually read that news report. Now, today, it is unavoidable. So, the sickoes know the MSM vultures will swarm to the crime scene within minutes and cover it wall-to-wall. The whole "15 minutes of fame" thing has grown to days/weeks and even months, until another big story comes along to bump it down.

These people are enabled and emboldened by exactly the degraded culture you cited. When we say we want to take our culture back to a time when families were stronger and values and morals were right and strong we are accused of wanting to go back to pre-civil rights days. Where the hell such an idea has any sort of substance in that conversation is beyond me. In fact, 'black' families were more together, strong, moral then. Not that the lack of 'civil rights' had anything even remotely to do with that. It's just that we need to fully understand what else was happening during the time of the civil rights movement ... Open drug use. Promotion of "free love", and then moving on. Women being told by feminists they didn't need a man in their homes, but that they should expect they could have any number of children out of wedlock and the government would support them every step of the way for a lifetime. And these same movements were insisting we shouldn't shove our morals down their throats.

These people have been and are now nearly fully incharge of this country, for decades. It's all part of the communist plan to take over this country without a shot ... however, having certain elements of our society doing the shooting in order for the centralized government to move in and take away our ability to protect ourselves, all for the greater good of the country.

And I told George Friday amid this horror how I am becoming increasingly highly suspicious of all these sudden mass shootings in the last several years. Read into that what you will. I trust no one, especially the HUGENESS of our own government not seen in the light of day. Just know the media is the vehicle by which anything and everything will be done by those looking to move the agenda along, as we all are aware of by now.

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